Of a great number of modes of expression and images in the New Testament we know that they originated from the common treasury of the languages of the secret sects of the Orient, having their source above all in Mandaism and the Mithraic religion. Thus “the rock,” “the water,” “the bread,” “the book,” or “the light of life,”[1] “the second death,” “the vine,” “the good shepherd,” &c., are simply expressions which in part are known also by the Rigveda and there belong to the ideas grouped about Agni, the God of Fire, Life, and Shepherds. Of the latter, too, as of Jesus, it is said that he loses not a single one of the flock entrusted to his care,[2] for Pushan, to whom the hymn in this connection is addressed, is only a form of Agni. In its symbols also the earliest Christianity coincides with Indian thought in such a striking manner that it can scarcely be explained as chance. Thus the horse,[3] the hare, and the peacock, which play so great a part in symbolic pictures of the catacombs, point to an ultimately Vedic origin, where they all stand in connection with the nature of Agni. Again, the Fish was already to be found in the Indian Fire Worship and appears to have here originally represented Agni swimming in the water of the clouds, the ocean of heaven.[4] In the hymn of the Rigveda itself Agni is often invoked as “the Bull.” This was probably originally a simple nature symbol, the Bull as image of the strength of the God; then the Fire-God and Sun-God, in his capacity of preparer of the Soma cup, was identified with the moon (Manu), whose crescents were taken as the horns of a bull. Later, however, the image of the Bull was driven out by that of the Ram. As early as in the Rigveda there is frequent mention of the God’s “banner of smoke.” Thus he was accustomed to be represented leading a ram with a banner in his hand or simply with a banner in his hand with the picture of a ram upon it, just as Christ is portrayed under the shape of a ram or lamb bearing a banner like a cross.
About the year 800 B.C. the sun, the heavenly Agni, which had hitherto been at the commencement of spring in the constellation of the Bull, entered (as a consequence of the advance of equality between day and night) that of the Ram. Thus it became, according to astrological modes of thought, itself a ram.[5] While it had formerly, in the shape of a bull, opened the spring and released the world from the power of winter—an image which was still retained in the Mithras Cult—these functions were now transferred to the ram, and this became a symbol of the God and the beast offered in expiatory sacrifices. Now the constellation of the Ram was described by the Persians in a word which could also mean lamb. In other cases also the lamb often took the place of the ram in the sacrificial worship of Nearer Asia; for example, among the Jews, who were accustomed to consume the Paschal lamb at the beginning of the year in spring. This is the explanation of the mystical lamb in the Revelation of John (which is scarcely an original Christian work, but shows signs of a pre-Christian Cult of Jesus[6]), being depicted by seven horns or rays in a way which rather implies the idea of a ram.
The fifth chapter of Revelation describes the lamb in its quality of heavenly victim of expiation. No one can open the book with the seven seals, which God holds in his right hand, in which the fate of the world appears to be written, but the lamb alone succeeds in so doing—“In the midst of the four-and-twenty elders who, clad in white garments and with crowns on their heads, sit around the divine throne, and in the midst of the four beasts who sit around it, the lamb, suddenly and without anything happening, stands as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes which are the seven spirits of God, sent forth into all the earth. And when he had taken the book the four living creatures and the four-and-twenty elders fell down before the lamb, having each one a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sing a new song saying, Worthy art thou to take the book and to open the seals thereof, for thou wast slain and didst purchase unto God with thy blood men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation, and madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests; and they reign upon the earth.”[7]
The scene recalls to mind the self-offering of Agni in the midst of the Gods, Priests, and victims, and the ascension of the God which then took place. Just as the sacrifice of the lamb in Revelation refers to the entrance of the sun into the constellation of the Ram, and the victory of light over wintry darkness and the beginning of a new life which it heralds, so were mystic sacrifices of bulls and rams in the other Sun Cults of Nearer Asia, especially in those of Attis and Mithras, very customary for purposes of expiation or new birth. On these occasions the beast was immolated while standing, and the blood which poured in streams from the victim was looked upon as a means of cleansing and of life-giving. In any case, throughout Revelation the lamb plays the part of the heavenly fire revealing God’s illuminatory nature, unfolding his wisdom and enlightening the world. As it is said of the heavenly Jerusalem: “And the city needed no sun and no moon to shine upon her, for the glory of God illumined her, and her light is the lamb.”[8]
Again, in the Church of the first century, at Easter, a lamb was solemnly slaughtered upon an altar and its blood collected in a chalice.[9] Accordingly in the early days of Christianity the comparison of Christ with the light and the lamb was a very favourite one. Above all the Gospel of John makes the widest use of it. As had already been done in the Vedic Cult of Agni, here too were identified with Christ the creative word of God that had existed before the world—the life, the light, and the lamb. And he was also called “the light of the world” that came to light up the darkness ruling upon the earth, as well as “the Lamb of God, who bore the sins of the world.”[10] And indeed the Latin expression for lamb (agnus) also expresses its relation to the ancient Fire-God and its sanctity as a sacrificial animal. For its root is connected with ignis (Scr. agni, the purifying fire, and yagna, victim), and also, according to Festus Pompeius, with the Greek “hagnos,” pure, consecrated, and “hagnistes,” the expiator.[11] In this sense “Agnus Dei,” the Lamb of God, as Christ is very frequently called, is in fact nothing else than “Agni Deus,” since Agnus stands in a certain measure as the Latin translation for Agni.[12] But in India at the so-called Hulfeast, at the spring equinox, a ram (lamb) used to be solemnly burnt as an expiatory victim representing Agni. The “crucifixion” of Jesus, as will likewise appear, is in a certain sense only the symbol of the burning of the divine lamb, which by its death redeems man from sin. In both cases the lamb refers to the lamb of the Zodiac, the constellation of the Ram, into which the sun enters at the time of the spring equinox, and with which consequently, in accordance with the astrological way of looking at things, it is blended, and which is as though burnt up by it. Thus were completed the victory of the Sun Fire (Agni) over the night of winter and the resurrection of nature to a new life, this cosmic process finding its reflection in the sacrifice upon earth of a lamb (agnus).
During the first century after Christ the lamb in association with light and fire was among the most popular images in ecclesiastical language and symbolism. The heathen Romans used to hang “bullæ” round the necks of their children as amulets. The Christians used consecrated waxen lambs, which were manufactured out of the remains of the Easter candles of the preceding year and distributed during Easter week. The belief then attached itself to these “Agnus Dei’s,” that if they were preserved in a house they gave protection against lightning and fire. Above all the lamps offered a convenient opportunity for symbolising Christ as a light, and thus making use of the image of the lamb.[13] The motif of the lamb with the cross is also found very frequently in old Christian art upon glass bowls, sarcophagi, and articles of use of all kinds. And indeed in such cases the cross is sometimes found upon the head or shoulder, sometimes at the side of the lamb or even behind him, while a nimbus in the shape of a disc of sunlight surrounds his head and points to the “light” nature of the lamb. The nimbus, too, is an old Indian symbol, and thus indicates that the whole conception was borrowed from the circle of Indian ideas. Later the lamb is also found upon the cross itself, and indeed at the point of intersection of the two arms surrounded by the disc of sunlight. This seems to point to the Saviour’s death upon the cross, the cross here appearing to be understood as the gibbet. But is it really certain that the cross in the world of Christian thought possessed this significance from the beginning as the instrument by means of which Jesus was put to death?
In the whole of Christendom it passes as a settled matter that Jesus “died upon the cross”; but this has the shape, as it is usually represented among painters, of the so-called Latin cross, in which the horizontal crosspiece is shorter than the vertical beam. On what then does the opinion rest that the cross is the gibbet? The Evangelists themselves give us no information on this point. The Jews described the instrument which they made use of in executions by the expression “wood” or “tree.” Under this description it often occurs in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, in which the gibbet is rendered by xúlon, the same expression being also found in the Gospels. Usually, however, the gibbet is described as staurós (i.e., stake), so much so that staurós and xúlon pass for synonyms. The Latin translation of both these words is crux. By this the Romans understood any apparatus for the execution of men generally, without thinking, however, as a rule of anything else than a stake or gallows (patibulum, stipes) upon which, as Livy tells us, the delinquent was bound with chains or ropes and so delivered over to death.[14] That the method of execution in Palestine differed in any way from this is not in any way shown. Among the Jews also the condemned used to be hanged upon a simple stake or beam, and exposed to a lingering death from heat, hunger, and thirst, as well as from the natural tension of his muscles. “To fasten to the cross” (stauroun, afigere cruci) accordingly does not mean either in East or West to crucify in our sense, but at first simply “to torture” or “martyr,” and later “to hang upon a stake or gallows.” And in this connection it appears that the piercing of hands and feet with nails, at least at the time at which the execution of Jesus is supposed to have occurred, was something quite unusual, if it was ever employed at all. The expressions prospassaleuein and proséloun, moreover, usually signify only to “fasten,” “to hang upon a nail,” but not at all “to nail to” in the special sense required.[15]
There is not then the least occasion for assuming that according to original Christian views an exception to this mode of proceeding was made at the execution of Jesus. The only place in the Gospels where there is any mention of the “marks of the nails” (viz., [John xx. 25]) belongs, as does the whole Gospel, to a relatively later time, and appears, as does so much in John, as a mere strengthening and exaggeration of the original story. For example, [Luke xxiv. 39], upon which John is based, does not speak at all of nail-marks, but merely of the marks of the wounds which the condemned must naturally have received as a consequence of being fastened to the stake. Accordingly the idea that Christ was “nailed” to the cross was in the earliest Christianity by no means the ruling one. Ambrose, for example, only speaks of the “cords” of the “cross” and the “ligatures of the passion” (“usque ad crucis laqueos ac retia passionis”),[16] and consequently knew nothing of nails having been used in this case.[17] If we consider that the “crucifixion” of Jesus corresponds to the hanging of Attis, Osiris, and so forth, and that the idea of the gibbeted gods of Nearer Asia called forth and fixed the Christian view; if we remember that Haman, the prototype of Jesus at the Purim feast, was also hanged upon a gallows,[18] then it becomes doubly improbable that our present ideas on the matter correspond to the views of the early Christians. For although we have no direct picture of the hanging of those Gods, yet we possess representations of the execution of Marsyas by Apollo, in which the God has his rival hauled up on to a tree by ropes round his wrists, which have been bound together.[19] But Marsyas, the inventor of the flute, the friend and guide of Cybele in the search for the lost Attis, is no other than the latter himself, or at any rate a personality very near akin to Attis.[20] It is not difficult to conclude that Attis too, or the man who represented him in the rites, was hung in the same manner to the stake or tree-trunk and thus put to death. Thus it seems that originally the manner of death of the Jewish Messiah was imagined in the same way, and so the heathens too called the new God in scorn “the Hanged One.”
How, then, did the idea come into existence that Jesus did not die upon a simple gallows, but rather upon wood having the well-known form of the cross? It arose out of a misunderstanding, from considering as the same and mingling two ideas which were originally distinct but described by the same word wood, tree, xúlon, lignum, arbor. This word signifies, as we have already said, on the one hand indeed the stake or gallows (staurós, crux) upon which the criminal was executed; but the same word, corresponding to the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, also referred to the “wood,” “the tree of life,” which was supposed to stand in Paradise. According to the Revelation of John it was to serve as food for the holy in the new Paradise to come,[21] and it was honoured by the Christians as the “seal” and guarantee of their salvation under the form of the mystic cross or Tau.
In all private religious associations and secret cults of later antiquity the members made use of a secret sign of recognition or union. This they carried about in the form, in some cases, of wooden, bronze, or silver amulets hung round the neck or concealed beneath the clothes, in others woven in their garments, or tattooed upon the forehead, neck, breast, hands, &c. Among these signs was the cross, and it was usually described under the name “Tau,” after the letter of the old Phœnician alphabet. Such an application of the cross to mystic or religious ends reaches back into grey antiquity. From of old the cross was in use in the cult of the Egyptian Gods, especially of Isis and Horus. It was also found among the Assyrians and Persians, serving, as the pictures show, in part as the mark and ornament of distinguished persons, such as priests and kings, in part also as a religious attribute in the hands of the Gods and their worshippers. According to some it was the sign which Jahwe ordered the Israelites to paint upon their doors with the blood of the lamb when he sent the angel of death to destroy the first-born of their Egyptian oppressors. It played a similar part also in Isaiah[22] and Ezekiel,[23] when it was a question of separating the god-fearing Israelites from the crowd of other men whom Jahwe purposed to destroy. When the Israelites were pressed in battle by the Amalekites Moses is said to have been helped by Aaron and Hur to stretch out his arms in the shape of that magic sign, and thus to have rendered possible a victory for his people over their enemies.[24] Among the other nations of antiquity also—the Greeks, Thracians, the Gaulish Druids, and so on—the Tau was applied in a similar manner to ritualistic and mystic ends. It appears as an ornament on the images of the most different divinities and heroes—e.g., Apollo, Dionysus, Demeter, Diana (the Phœnician Astarte). It is also found upon innumerable Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Phœnician coins, upon vases, pictures, jewellery, &c. In Alexandria the Christians found it chiselled upon the stone when the temple of Serapis was destroyed, in 391. In this temple Serapis himself was represented of superhuman size, with arms outstretched in the form of a cross, as though embracing the universe. In Rome the Vestal virgins wore the cross upon a ribbon round the neck. Indeed, it even served as an ornament upon the weapons of the Roman legions and upon the standards of the cavalry long before Constantine, by his well-known “vision,” gave occasion for its being expressly introduced under the form of the so-called “Monogram of Christ” into the army as a military sign.[25] But in the North also we find the cross, not only in the shape of the hooked-cross and the three-armed cross (Triskele), but also in the form of Thor’s hammer, upon runic, stones, weapons, utensils, ornaments, amulets, &c. And when the heathens of the North, as Snorre informs us, marked themselves in the hour of death with a spear, they scratched upon their bodies one of the sacred signs that has been mentioned, in doing which they dedicated themselves to God.[26]